Trans Lives Matter, But A Below-Average Homicide Rate Isn't A "Crisis"

Kiesha Jenkins / Source: Facebook

Kiesha Jenkins was robbed, beaten, and shot to death by a group of four men a week ago in Philadelphia.  Her death brought the year-to-date count of transgender folks murdered in the US up to 20 or 21.

But as tragic and horrible as Kiesha's death was, it wasn't indicative of a national crisis or "historic rates" of transgender murder.

As discussed here a few months ago, if transgender persons were being killed at the average U.S. homicide rate, we'd likely have seen many more than 20 transgender homicide victims nationwide so far this year.  Given the best available estimates of the trans population, and 2013 CDC homicide data, an average homicide rate would have resulted in 48 transgender victims that year.  This year, it's likely that the "expected" transgender homicide rate will be even higher, as a number of major US cities have seen a dramatic increase in homicides in 2015.

Average frequency of violent crime victimization in the U.S. in 2013.  Source: FBI

A wider array of media sources are paying closer attention to homicides involving trans people this year than has been the case in years past.  Many readers, commentators, and Twitterers seem to be assuming that every murder of a trans person was a hate crime.  This assumption is not helpful, and ignores the reality that transgender people are at least as vulnerable to the vicissitudes of American life that resulted in more than 16,000 people losing their lives to homicide in 2013.

Short Take: Another Racially-Motivated Police Brutality Case

James Blake practicing for the 2010 US Open / Photo: Paul VanDerWerf, CC BY 2.0

On Monday, a plain clothes NYPD officer thought this guy standing around in front of a nice hotel was a credit card fraud suspect.  So clearly, he had to apprehend the suspect by bum rushing him.  Because, y'know, you can never be too careful - white collar criminals are renowned for their deadly encounters with police.

Unfortunately, as it turns out, the bum-rushee was actually professional tennis player James Blake, not a fraudster, and not the actual suspect (who, it turns out, wasn't even the perp.)  Oops.  TMZ obtained security camera footage from the NYPD (below.)

No, There Doesn't Really Appear to Be A Trans Homicide Crisis

Protesters in Atlanta, August 2015 / Photo: HotlantaVoyeur.com, CC BY 2.0

I’m going to say something at the risk of people I care about getting mad at me.  I don’t want folks thinking I’m trying to minimize oppression or violence against marginalized communities.  People who know me well know that is among the last things I’d ever want to do.  But they also know that I’m a stickler for ensuring that declarations of social crisis be founded in sound data, not gut feelings or fear. 

Why am I compelled to be such a pain about bad stats?  See this page for a thorough explanation.

That said – this Al Jazeera story is wrong.  No, there does not appear to be an actual transgender homicide crisis occurring.

This story appears to be the phenomenon of confirmation bias at work.  People, based on the information that they have, assume that trans people are murdered more frequently than non-trans folks. They then notice every report of a new trans homicide and add it to their collection of proof that there is, in fact, a trans homicide crisis.  In the process, they don’t really notice all of the dozens and dozens of other reports of non-trans people being murdered.

This practice is common to us all.  But we still need to recognize it when it’s happening.

Claims that there is a homicide crisis within the transgender community doesn't really seem to square with actual statistics.  In fact, if this count is accurate (13 or 14 to date for 2015), it indicates that trans people are being killed at a disproportionately LOWER rate than the U.S. population at large. 

Here's why: